[Closed] Cadenza [M]

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum House • Uptown

Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719

He couldn’t bring himself to care. His heart was all the way in his throat by the time Genevria Trevisani turned away, and with that smile still on his face, he couldn’t bring himself to care what any of those little flickers of her painted-smooth features meant. He couldn’t bring himself to ask, just then, what she might suspect. Ava shifted a little, and he tilted with her, easy, following the other galdor’s footsteps – toward the velvet dark of the hall, away from the smoke, away from the light. He couldn’t spare any of those girls a backward glance; he could barely even hear the harp, such was the roaring in his ears.

Tom thought he’d done good. He thought. That’d been satisfaction in her voice, hadn’t it? He tried to think of the way she’d said it. He was sure that’d been satisfaction warming up her tone. She’d looked expectant there for a moment, he thought, and he thought since he’d played mung, she’d –

Down the narrow dark hall. He kept his gait even. Heel to toe, back straight, arm still around Ava’s shoulder. Except now he could feel something whisper through her bones, even through the soft silk, like the tremble of branches on a tree. Her throat caught, and Tom felt his eyes burning. There was something wet at the corners, and he blinked it away. He didn’t feel it on his cheeks.

There was nothing of it in Ava’s voice, though. It was low, now. Husky. He felt his stomach turn over, a familiar numb tingling spread through his jaw. He didn’t know how to, he’d never, not with –

“I don’t know, my dear,” replied Anatole, a little louder, confident. Loud enough for anybody nearby to hear. “There’s a fine little sitting-room facing the south garden…” He let it drift off, a giggle burbling up from his diaphragm, cut off quickly. He sped up his pace.

Down that hall, down… He tried to remember. It’d been hard, damned hard – concords hard – to get a map of the place, and even then, it’d been incomplete. He thought he was going south, though; he thought surely he was. Because there was a turn there, he thought, and then another, and then –

The brass pendulum again, glinting softly in the low light. Shifting his weight, he guided Ava back, away, down another hall. Oes, he thought. East. This felt right. It was quieter here, tomb-quiet, with a fresh, night-smelling draft in the air. It was very, very dark, so dark Tom almost couldn’t see. At the end of this hall, though, there was a sliver of strange, soft light, very unlike the lamplight.

As they moved toward it through the pitch-dark, his gait shifted, ever so slightly. He loosened his arm round her shoulder, relaxed his posture. Padded toe to heel.

The room was small, lit in a watery wash of starlight and the faded yellow of a distant streetlamp. The walls were paneled with bookshelves, the spines indistinct shapes in the shadows. It was full of the night breeze, full of the song of crickets. One small window opposite the door was open, and the pale, gauzy drapes ruffled and billowed in the wind, casting shifting shapes across the floor. Nearby, there were two leather armchairs and a fine circular end-table, the light reflecting ghostly on its polished surface.

“Thank you, beata.sister; close friend” It was just a murmur, only just loud enough for her to hear. It came out unexpectedly, but he didn’t regret a syllable of it, warm with all the gratefulness he’d been holding since the carriage.

He clasped her shoulder once; then his hand slipped away, and he with it. He closed the door behind them, leaning back on it ’til it clicked, then moved hastily away. The slim shadow of him crept across the moonlit floor, over to the open window. He waved the drapes aside with a skinny arm, braced himself against the sill, then hunched over out the window and convulsed quietly.

There wasn’t much noise of him retching, save a couple of rasping lungfuls of air. He picked his glass back up off the sill, took a mouthful, swished it round, and spat it onto the shrubs. Dumping the rest of the brandy out the window, he turned away. “Good for the greens,” he slurred, then shambled on his shaky legs away from the window.

He wilted into the nearby armchair, running a hand through his hair and knotting his fingers in a tangle of red. Before he looked up, he made himself breathe in and out until he could count a few seconds between the breaths.

“What the fuck did she mean by that,” he breathed, finally lifting his eyes. The room still spun; he tried to focus on Ava, blinked and squinted his eyes until the two of her shivered into one. “Are you all right?” The line of his mouth trembled, just a little. “There’s no –”

He caught a whiff, suddenly, of something sickly-sweet, some clinging – he caught a whiff of his own cologne and gagged again, tears prickling in his eyes. He swallowed. “You should know,” he said quietly, “they can’t scry through me, or anyone in my field. The mona won’t comply. We’re – they can’t watch us like that.” He pressed the palm of his hand to his forehead, taking a shuddering breath.

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
The Pendulum House, Uptown

T
om followed her lead, again, and Anatole’s voice echoed through the hall, confident and bright, an echo back of her own almost-laughter. She let out a soft breathy noise, almost like a giggle. He drew her along, and Ava followed, close, like a shadow in the narrow dark. Quieter and quieter as they went, the music gone, the smells receding - all but one, wafting against her every time Ava turned towards him.

She felt it, when the touch of his arm changed in the dark; listening, she heard it in his steps, the way they softened against the carpet, crept cat-quiet. They pushed into the east library, and Tom spoke to her, only just more than a breath, and Ava smiled, a faint, thin little thing that brought with it sudden tears in the corner of her eyes. Tom squeezed her shoulder once and let go, closing the door.

Ava didn’t chase him to the window; she left him in privacy, and did not watch. She turned to the books instead, her arms crossed tight over herself, and stared at the spines of them. She couldn’t make out the titles in the dark but she didn’t even try. She had thought perhaps she would be sick, but strangely Tom’s soft gagging gasps seemed to ease something inside of her, to soften the hard knot like a fist in her stomach, just enough. She stared at the books until the heat behind her eyes faded, until she could make out a few silvery letters in the moonlight.

Ava heard the splash of liquid out the window; she wondered if she should have told Tom to drink it. Tonight doesn’t count, she could have told him; tonight you’ve a good reason. A little liquid courage, wasn’t it? But she hadn’t spoken, and she didn’t know if she’d have had the strength to see it through. She didn’t know if she ought to have tried. She didn’t know, either, if it wasn’t good that she was glad she hadn’t. Too late now, Ava thought. Too late.

The spines of the books blurred again, and Ava held very still, and thought that if she cried, she wouldn’t have any way to fix her make up. She eased her eyes shut, and took a deep breath of clean air, feeling the faintest rustle of the breeze against her face.

Tom’s voice was a hoarse croak behind her; Ava turned, slowly to look at him. She pressed her lips together, her face still and motionless in the moonlight. Slowly, she crossed the room to him; she felt the brush of his field, a discordant, sour note - was it less sour than it had been? - and she sat on the opposite chair, perched straight-backed on the edge of it, hands in her laps, not a wrinkle in the dark red silk of her dress.

Was she all right?

Ava didn’t know how to answer him. At first she thought she might scream if she opened her mouth, and so she kept it closed instead until she was sure she could not. For a moment she thought she could hear the soft notes of the harp, but it was only the beating of her heart, the rushing of it in her head. There was a faint sickly sweet smell amidst the crisp breeze and the books, lingering in her nostrils.

“No,” Ava said. “I’m not all right.” Something felt as if it broke in her voice, shattered against those last two words; a distant echo of pain, a faint glimmer of fury. She swallowed it down.

It’s not your fault, she wanted to remind him. You did what you had to do, and you did it well. We both did what we had to do. We survived, this time, thanks to you. She could have said it all, but she thought he knew already, and what she hadn’t said she wasn’t sure he wanted to hear from her.

It was only an echo, all this; like a nightmare, she wanted to say. It can’t hurt me anymore. She knew it wasn’t true.

Ava closed her eyes for a long moment, and when she opened them again they were dry once more. “The comments about me were just - playing, I think,” She didn’t force the bitterness from her tone and she didn’t soften the words with a smile; she sat, and stared at the distant moonlit glass, and didn’t look at Tom.

“Why ask us here,” Ava whispered. “Why?” She shook her head, slowly, and turned her gaze to him. It caught on the strain on his face, the look like he might be sick again; the trembling on his hands. Despite herself Ava smiled at him, a pale little trembling thing, and again she felt tears in the corners of her eyes. “I think there was something she expected from him but I - I don’t know...” her hands were still soft in her lap, loosely knit together. She sighed a little, softly, and shook her head, earrings swaying in the moonlight.

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum House • Uptown

Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719

No,” was all he said, soft-like, looking up at her solemnly. No, I reckon not. Some of that dizzy was easing off, but he felt shaky as a newborn sparrow, and half as blind. His perceptive conversationalist’s eyes were starting to adjust to the dark, but not near enough: when he looked at her face, all he saw was a pale shape, the shadows of lips and nose and eyes. What light there was caught on that sprinkling of gold around her eyelids, and on the teardrop-glitter of her earrings, made colorless by the dimness.

For just a moment, Tom heard anger in the shape of those words, and he was damned grateful for it. Burned like a shot of cheap whisky. Hard to down, painful, but something about it gave you the strength to go in swinging.

He shut his eyes, seeming to sink deeper into the leather upholstery, turning his face toward the breeze. “I’m not, either.” Opening them, he peered out at the stars. A few leaves tumbled across the courtyard, and the drapes rustled some more. He hadn’t wanted to think any more about those poor lasses, but he kept thinking he’d hear the plucking of that harp again; on the way down those twisting halls, he’d been terrified he’d pass by the wrong door, hear the wrong thing.

There was nothing he could do. He couldn’t bring it up, because there was nothing they could do. Not right now, anyway. He wondered at the sour look he’d given the harpist; he knew why he’d done it, and he didn’t regret it a whit – getting Ava out of there before he made a fool of himself in front of Trevisani had been more important – but he worried, now. Worried what’d happen, once this laoso caoja was over with.

And he’d thought about it, standing there, with the madam asking him if he’d like to try Gioran fucking Cognac instead of Ava. He’d thought if he knew more, maybe there was a way he could’ve spun it. Sometimes a man likes more than one drink. Fucking mung. But just one of them, maybe, one or two, if they could’ve gotten them out, away.

And then where? With a pang, he felt terribly alone. Just him and Ava, against Uptown Vienda? Ava was one nattle – she was resourceful, she had contacts, but how far did those contacts go?

Tom opened his eyes and made an effort to sit up straight. She was smiling at him, now, a wan, fragile smile, and he smiled back. Just a flicker of a sad smile.

He folded his hands in his lap, pressed them to stop them shaking. “I don’t know what she expected,” he replied. “Playing. P-Playing, like –” His voice broke; he raked his hand through his hair again, held on, tried to master himself. Too short. Oily. His lip curled. He took a deep breath, hand dropping limp over the arm of the chair. “I’d say that’s what all this is, but she’s – she’s smarter than that. She didn’t say anything that evening, nothing that I can think of that’d be… I don’t know. She caprised me when she said that, and I swear I can still feel it.” A shudder ran through him.

He looked over and found Ava’s eyes in the dark.

“Megiro, the one with the clocked-up eye. I’ve seen him before. He claims to be Seventen, but he’s Azmus’ lapdog; I think he might be Cadre. I could’ve tried to get more out of him, but then she showed up, and things were getting dicey…” He shook his head. “I got a bad feeling it’s all connected. How far up does this go? Where would we even –”

Something painful flickered across his face, and he didn’t seem able to speak for a few moments. Instead, he looked back down at his hands in his lap, but then looked away abruptly, as if the sight of them burned him. Ne, the way he jerked his chin, shut his eyes, drew in a sharp breath – like the sight of them was an indignity.

He didn’t look at her. “What’s the point of – this – if I can’t,” he muttered through his teeth, gesturing with a shudder; then he felt a flush of shame. “Epaemo. I know, I know. I just need a second.” He shut his eyes; there was a glisten at the edges.

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
The Pendulum House, Uptown

H
e looked tired - so tired. It was worn and etched into all the creases of that familiar face, a bone deep exhaustion. His smile was no stronger than hers had been, but he gave it to her anyway, unhesitating.

Ava met Tom’s look in the moonlit dark. She listened without a flicker of movement in her face, nothing but a soft, sad look in her eyes, as if it were only his feelings that interested her. Azmus, she told herself, settling the name somewhere in her memory. Julian Megiro, Azmus’s lapdog, Cadre - looking for -

Something twisted in her chest, twisted and ached. It was familiar; it was all too familiar, listening to that voice - the tired look on his face - snatching at bits of words here and there, tucking them away for later, to write down when it was all over, to pass along. Hiding herself behind a smooth, even face.

Tom shuddered and ground to a halt; he looked down, then away, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of himself. Ava felt tears in the corners of her own eyes again, watching him; she felt her silence like a wall between them. What do you know about Azmus? She wanted to ask. What do you know about Cadre? But they would betray her, those questions; she didn’t dare. Did she?

Tom was shaking. Despair; it was despair on Anatole’s face, an expression Ava had never seen in his life but she could not but see. Could not but name. That ache in her chest worsened, and Ava knew it was her heart, twisting itself into ludicrous knots, longing for things to which it had no right. Rattling, she thought, rattling the bars of its cage.

And if she were wrong?

They weren’t only her secrets; but they were stacked between them, heavy and thick, shutting him out, and Ava couldn’t bear it. She knew what she did, but she didn’t know how she could do otherwise. Not after tonight.

Ava reached out and took those hands he couldn’t look at; she settled her hands around them, covered them for him. And she took a deep breath, and she made ready to bare herself to him, here in the quiet darkness of the library, with that soft moonlit view of the garden beyond, and she was glad of it. Sister, he’d called her, and his voice had been so soft.

“We’re not alone, Tom,” Ava said. Tom; she couldn’t call him Mr. Cooke, not tonight. Not after everything. She didn’t know whether it was wise to speak of this here. Tom had said they were safe; Tom had said they couldn’t be listened to. She had trusted him with her life, and she had trusted him with her freedom. She was about to trust him with so much more, with all the secrets she had left to offer; what was this one thing?

Because Ava knew that despair; she knew it like she knew herself, deeper than her own name. She had known it for years, and it had weighed on her. It had been heavy; it had been so heavy that it had threatened to crush all her anger. Despair and anger, and she had not known which would win; they had warred inside her, and all she could do was survive. Despair had stripped away her name; it had stripped away all the things that she would have once said made her her, until maybe the only thing left - the only thing that had survived - was that anger.

And then - a whisper in the night - a promise. Not of better things to come, for they were never guaranteed, but a promise that she would have the chance to fight back.

She wasn’t wrong. She couldn’t be.

“This is only one part of it,” Ava promised, and there it was, that little flicker of anger; kept alive, all those years, a little spark, just waiting - waiting, waiting, waiting for a chance. Fed, slowly, with all that pain; tended carefully in the center of her until there was enough space to let it leap free; to let it fill her. “It’s wrong here. This place, this city - this country. But there’s hope. There’s resistance.”

Ava held there, her hands on his, her eyes steady on his face; she was leaning forward, her dress creased softly at the waist, utterly intent on him. “You’re not alone,” she promised, and she put everything she had in to it. “Not if you don’t want to be.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum House • Uptown

Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719

In the dark, he heard the rustling of the drapes, and then the creak of leather upholstery. He felt movement, in the air and in the mona stirring in his field. He thought – hoped, maybe – she was getting up to start looking for whatever it was they were trying to find; he thought she’d turn away from his weakness, give him that. He thought she might’ve understood why he was hurting, behind the smooth composure of her face, or what of it he’d been able to read in the dimness.

When he felt her hands fold around his, he didn’t know what to do. He remembered the way she’d let him help her out of the carriage, and then the curl of her fingers round his elbow. It wasn’t like that. It was almost worse, for what flooded through him.

He’d been holding those tears back, pushing down that lump in his throat, and he was doing a damn good job. He’d’ve got it, if she’d just turned away, if she’d just given him another moment to sit with his eyes shut and push it down. Push it down, and down, and down. To find that iron in himself to make his heart callous again. It’d got soft; it was getting soft, just like his hands were soft now, without anything to toughen it back –

Ava hid those hated hands underneath hers, and she told him he wasn’t alone, and she used the name Meggie’d gave him. He squeezed his eyes shut, shuddering, and he couldn’t keep the tears from rolling down his cheeks, warm with embarrassment. Like a flooding boch, and here, of all places.

What was she playing at? There was no point in this; it was almost cruel. Of course he was alone, but it wasn’t any matter; if you had a job to do, you didn’t ask why, or look ahead. It didn’t matter if you were alone, and thinking on it never did anybody any good.

But that wasn’t all she had to say. He heard her, there, on the edge of her seat, felt her leaning closer. He opened his eyes, brow creasing with confusion. It didn’t make any sense to him, at first, the anger that flickered up through her soft voice. One part of it, she said, there’s hope, like she hadn’t just told him why there wasn’t, like they both didn’t know that only a fool would think –

His mouth opened slightly. He blinked, eyelids fluttering, like he wasn’t sure he was seeing her. The pieces were sliding together.

Oes. Godsdamn him, godsdamn.

Resistance.

He should’ve known – why didn’t he put it together before? All those dark spaces hidden behind sheaves of silk, all those – flood it, Caina! That was why, he thought. Caina’d told Tomcat everything, back in the Rose, but there toward the end, there’d been something she couldn’t tell him. She’d disappeared to Vienda, and it hadn’t been for the Drain; it hadn’t been for any of those laoso kov she’d been doing odd-jobs with for spare change –

And Ava flooding Weaver! Binder, he thought. Of course the kov’s name wasn’t really Binder. He’d thought, of course, he’d had lots of thoughts, suspicions; he’d thought about her stock, about all the places along the Vein that benny silk could’ve come from, how a nattle like her could’ve built up a business like that. And maybe plenty of that silk’d passed through Hawke’s hands, or somebody else’s, but that wasn’t the point. There was nothing that didn’t pass through the King’s hands, these days. That didn’t mean a damn thing.

And it washed over him – his face softened, and more tears came – what she was doing, what she was offering him. How much that offer cost. He felt a pang at how he’d pressed her, less than a week ago, about how she’d found Anatole’s letter.

He didn’t know if he agreed that there was hope, but that anger in her voice meant more than hope, anyway. Not being alone. It was piss-terrifying, because she wasn’t giving him a job; she was giving him something else, something he’d never had. And he didn’t know how much he thought of the Resistance – he hadn’t even known he’d believed in it – but he thought a damned lot of Ava, and right now, there wasn’t much else mattered.

“There’s so much I have to tell you,” he breathed. “Hell’s fuckin’ teeth.” He broke her gaze for just a second, to flick a glance over his shoulder, round the room. He was on the edge of his seat, now, too. “Not here. We’ll talk – talk about this again, and I’ll tell you what I should’ve told you a long time ago, if I’d known.” The set of his jaw trembled. “If I’d been the man then that I am now.”

He paused, blinking, thinking hard.

Slow and careful, he eased just one of his hands out; he thought he could look at it, now. He thought he didn’t need her to hide it, thought he could use it for something else. He laid it on top of hers instead, pressed them gently. “If we don’t make it out of here – physically” – a muscle at his left cheekbone twitched, flickered – “I need to know someplace to take all this. Even if it’s just a dead drop. So it’s not for nothing, no matter what happens.”

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
The Pendulum House, Uptown

H
e was crying, at first, and Ava knew she was hurting him. She couldn’t stop; if she stopped, if she didn’t reach the end of it, then the pain was for nothing. So she pushed on, through the tightness of Tom’s face and the hitching of his breath, through the confusion and pain that washed over him, and she held until his eyes opened, and he looked at her -

And his eyes went wide. Patience, Ava told herself. Patience. Give him time. In the silence of the room she could hear the beating of her own heart, pounding in her chest. And then the wall of his silence broke, and he was crying again. The good kind of pain, Ava hoped; clean, like losing a tooth, and not the wretched awful sort that was like a rotten one trapped in your mouth. She thought Tom knew both; she thought she had seen both, just now. A toothache was a terrible thing, and the pulling of the tooth hurt; and after? Ava ran her tongue over her own teeth, lips soft together, and didn’t think too much more on it.

So much he had to tell her? It wasn’t quite the reaction Ava had expected, and it took her a few moments to understand. She had expected him to talk, if she had thought about it at all but he was right; it wasn’t the place.

He pressed his hand to hers and he went to the heart of it, and Ava felt something turn over and ease in her chest. “Yes,” she said, frowning softly, thinking it over. She understood, even if perhaps she didn’t want to. “Caina,” Ava said after a moment, and offered him something that was nearly a grin. If he hadn’t realized yet, he would have soon enough; and, anyway, Ava couldn’t think who else might believe him, if he - if she -

“Take it to Caina,” Ava promised, softly.

Ava held his hands tightly, a last long moment, and she smiled at him. It was no less frightening for being over; this wasn’t the sort of act that was over in the doing. It was a beginning, not an end, this telling - this invitation. Ava knew Tom understood that.

He had things to say; Ava was glad of it. She would listen, in time; they would sit and talk, and there would be no more walls between them. She had torn hers down, and it seemed he was ready to do the same. She was almost even more grateful that he was able to wait; she was most grateful that he seemed as glad of it as she felt.

“You’re right. Better not to sit around,” Ava said, firmly. She released Tom’s hands, gently - waited for him to release hers - and rose, brushing the crease from her dress. Ava glanced around the room. Ghastly, Tom had said. All manner of noises. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was all they had.

Ava took herself back to the bookshelves, and walked along them, slowly. Noises that one couldn’t explain said secret passage to Ava, but how to open it? The books, perhaps? She stepped back, scanning the shelves - looking for something strange, a break in the pattern, a name that stood out.

“A secret passage, perhaps?” Ava asked, glancing back over her shoulder at Tom, then at the shelves again. “It would explain the ghastly noises.”

It might be, Ava thought, some sort of galdori joke; something that would make those who knew of it feel a little cleverer than their fellows. Some book that would be obvious to them, that would stand out; not too obvious, not something the uninitiated might stumble across. It should be - if her estimations were correct - something that would be obvious in hindsight.

Ava had little idea of how to find such a book, but she did know sitting around wouldn’t help. If we don’t make it out of here, she thought - physically. A shudder threatened, but Ava held it back, and focused her gaze on the books again, examining them as best as she could in the dim light.

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum House • Uptown

Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719

Caina. Of course.” A dry smile flickered across his face, the littlest twitch of his lip. There was something wistful about the way he looked down and away. It felt darkly humorous and grim and sad all at once, to think of going to Caina like that. Even with what he knew she was involved in, now; even with how it was bigger than any one of them, bigger, he reckoned, than all those bochi memories, otherwise she’d never’ve left to begin with – bitter and ugly, to think of himself shambling to Caina’s door above the Stag again, a different face, a different voice. Wearing some other poor dead man like a coat; telling Caina, once again, to trust Tomcat.

To trust a thing like that. Clocking awful. He didn’t think he could sit there and think about it much longer, so he just tucked it away in his head in case he needed it.

She withdrew her hands, and he withdrew his, and he was glad of it, if only because sitting around was starting to put him on edge. Better, he thought wryly, heaving himself up out of his chair with a creak of leather, if both of them got out alive, in one piece, and in the same body they’d come in in. That was usually the hope.

So Tom palmed away the rest of his tears, took a shuddering breath, and drifted over to a shelf, squinting hard at the spines. “Was what I was thinking,” he grunted, clasping his hands behind his back. “Leastways, I hope so, because if it’s a ghost…”

He didn’t laugh, and his tone was fair serious, but he smiled a secret smile to himself.

The way she was looking at the books, he reckoned she figured there’d be some switch hidden in there. Seemed to him like something out of one of those Broderick Lundgrun books Caina’d showed him once, but he couldn’t argue that it seemed right up the alley of these kov. In the business of switches and secret passageways, at least, you couldn’t’ve picked better company; Tom were alone, this sort of thing’d have him scratching his head for hours. Flooding clandestine, he thought again, chewing his lip, scanning the spines.

Wasn’t like he didn’t have plenty to distract him, too. He kept reminding himself that it’d wait, but they kept shuddering through him, those little thrills of realization – more questions sprouting in his head. Sometimes, the answer came twice as quick as the question; sometimes, there were only more questions, and the silence of Ava moving through the dark at his back, Ava who’d just taken his hands and told him there was a reason to fight, was deafening. The most dangerous thing he’d ever held dear.

Hope, maybe, was a terrible thing. Despair kept people in line, but hope did something else entirely.

But he couldn’t think about the dangers or about the questions, or about whether there was hope, or about whether it was his hope to have. He couldn’t think about any of it. He tried to focus.

He found himself thinking how easy it would’ve been, if he were a proper golly. There couldn’t be a more noble use than this, he thought, and quantitative and clairvoyant were close enough to be sisters; if he could’ve just recalled the monite, he thought he might’ve been able to ask the mona about spaces behind the shelves, if he asked nicely. Something simple; they’d responded once, after all, and they’d never riven him completely. It dawned on him then that maybe he still could, and he started looking over the spines more carefully.

He couldn’t tell what order they were in, if any. Author, he reckoned. He made out A-M-A-R-T, the gold threading glittering in the shifting moonlight – something called Coruscate, Scintillating Astral Dwarf Bodies – he shivered, kept looking for grimoires. There weren’t any, as far as he could tell, or so few you’d be hard-pressed to find something useful –

Alfarsi. Perceptive, he thought with a twinge of irritation, but it’d do. He massaged his raw eyes, then reached to pull the book from the shelf. He’d got it halfway out when it stuck. Grunting, he tried harder, but all he heard was a distant click.

He froze, but there was nothing, save the rustle of the drapes.

“Uh,” he said after a moment, stepping away from the book and scanning the rest of the shelf, “Ava, have you seen any – grimoires?” The letters were melting together, so he rubbed his eyes again. Moved along the wall opposite her, leaning close to the spines, tracing the letters with his fingertips.

Lambert, Lemieux, Manfredi – Mantel, he noticed, with a flicker of a smile. He reached for it, easing it out more careful than he’d done before. It got stuck a little less than halfway, and when he pulled, he heard another muffled click, this time from somewhere behind the shelf.

“Perceptive and clairvoyant, now,” he said, with a little more confidence. “Maybe – only one of each.” He kept moving along the shelf, kept scanning closely, though his eyes and his head hurt, and he felt wrung out. He reckoned Ava’s eyes might have more luck; he kept feeling like he’d missed one, like he’d looked right over the title and not known it for what it was.

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
The Pendulum House, Uptown

There were, Ava thought, so many books. She knew about libraries; she had been in the homes of galdori in Uptown, and once or twice she had passed doors that opened into studies – studies full of books, walls of them, more than she could count at a glance. She knew of libraries; she had heard that there was one in Brunnhold the size of a building. Ava understood, intellectually, that there must be books upon books, dozens of them, lined up in – rows? Along the walls? She couldn’t quite picture it.

Even this little room was something of a marvel. She had never gotten to go into those studies; in the homes of all those galdori, she had been there to sell fabric, and one didn’t sell fabric in the library, or the study, or whatever they called those rooms. So many books! Ava felt an ugly curl of jealousy somewhere in her stomach. Kahirasheba, Ava read, making the shapes of the word with her tongue; she could not even place the country of its origin.

She worked her way down the alphabet, her face as smooth as she could keep it. Sevensack, read another book; Ava teased it out of the shelves, and read Religious, Feminine, and Feline Figures: Trickery in Algebraic Functions and slowly slid the book back into place. She sighed, softly, glancing along the shelves again. Tom asked about grimoires, and Ava glanced back over her shoulder blinking at the cast of the silvery moon, glittering against the gray in his hair.

“Grimoires?” Ava glanced back at the shelves. “No,” she said, thinking of it – surprised. “No, I haven’t – haven’t seen many, in fact.”

She should have noticed the lack, Ava thought, a little disappointed in herself. It was hard to tell, naturally, but she should have realized a galdor library would have more obvious grimoires. It was a natural joke, Ava thought, her heart lifting. Make a library that spellcasters would find boring, and hide a handful of grimoires in it, known only to the initiated. It made perfect sense – if only they could find the grimoires!

And why had Tom been looking for them? Ava decided it was best not to think of it, not just now. She was glad he’d thought of it, however it might have been.

Ava skimmed the bookshelves again, taking a step back. It was hard to tell; there were so many names. Tom went back to the shelves; there was a quiet click, and Ava’s brows lifted. One of each; perceptive and clairvoyance down, so living, physical and static to go. Ava didn’t know much about any of them, and she wandered back along the shelves towards the Ks, staring intently.

“Kannamar. Living,” Ava said, with satisfaction; the living grimoire she had read discussed him extensively, although Ava had not quite understood all of it. She reached out and pulled on the book, slowly, delicately; it stuck, and then she pulled a little harder, and there was a third click. Ava took a deep breath.

Static and physical. Ava glanced around the library again, trying to think. She didn’t know much at all about either; Anatole’s interests hadn’t run to –

Hox, Ava remembered. They liked static in Hox; Anatole had read a book, once, on Hoxian sculpture, and it had mentioned – offhand, casually, as if it was well-known – that Hoxians were the expert on static conversation. Ava stepped back, scanning the shelves. Hoxian names were a mass of consonants, big bunches of them all together, and she – Ava’s eyes caught on one, Zroks, and she stepped forward, gingerly tugging at the book. There was a click, and Ava exhaled, carefully. “That’s static,” she said, faint pride tingling in her voice.

Ava took a deep breath. The names, she decided. A pattern in the names; they wouldn't want them too close together, just to be safe. “What letters did they start with?” Ava asked. “The names.” Tom told her, and she nodded, slowly. A, K, M and Z; spread out along the alphabet, yes, but they were missing all that space between M and Z. Hard to tell where, but she focused on the shelves in there, her eyes flicking back and forth between them. It would, Ava thought, take hours to check them all – hours and hours. That one didn’t even seem to be in Estuan; those letters weren’t –

Ava hesitated. Where did they like physical conversation? Static in Hox, clairvoyant in Mugroba, quantitative in Anaxas. Bastia? She hadn’t seen any Bastian names, but would she know them? Or –

Gior?

Hesitant, Ava stepped forward and touched the slim green book with the odd letters running down its spine. She glanced back at Tom, then back at the book again, and slowly pulled it out, pressing once, sharply, through the point where it stuck.

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum House • Uptown

Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719

Kannamar. Tom turned slightly, shot a covert look over his shoulder at the back of Ava’s head, the moonlight just faintly catching on her dark curls. He couldn’t help a smile. He remembered the books she’d rescued from Binder’s office, painstaking, and wondered how much of herself she’d poured into the study of them. The name was familiar to him, too, though he couldn’t think why. Not from studying any living grims, that was for sure. Kannamar, Kannamar – classicists like Gregoires or Kannamar, he thought, completely unbidden. Where’d he got that? He couldn’t remember. The phrase left a warm, sloshy impression on his mind, too hazy to focus on.

He turned back to his own inspection of the shelves, but he didn’t think he had much left in him, being honest. He felt a funny tweaking in his eyes, like if he squinted much harder, they’d be bloodshot as Megiro’s. With a quiet grunt, he fumbled in his frock for his glasses, and by that time, he heard another click. Static, she said, and he smiled again.

By the time she asked him about the letters, he’d caught on; after a few moments, he drifted over to the other wall, watching her work. One last grim – physical, if he was keeping track.

He didn’t know much about the physical conversation, and he didn’t know if she did, either. Biting his lip, he glanced over the shelf from a little ways behind her. Eventually, she stepped up, casting a hard-to-read look over her shoulder; he raised his brows. She reached for a thin, dark spine, and as she started pulling it out, the frail light caught the curves and loops of some tongue Tom didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Deftung, at least.

A muffled click sounded from behind them, and then a pop, and then a low, hissing shuffle. Fluttering a blink, he tottered back a step and turned. Something about the room’d changed, he thought, but it was subtle, and it took him a scattering of seconds. One of the shelves on the opposite wall – the one he’d just been looking at – had eased its way just a pina mant from the wall, leaving a sliver of pitch-black, maybe a foot and a half wide, between it and its neighbor. Like a door, just ajar.

Frowning, Tom padded over. Up close, some of the moonlight from the library leaked inside. In a swarm of shadow, he could make out a patch of stone floor, a few steps’ length. It gave way to the first few steps of a stairwell, steep and worn, curling its way round and down into pitch. No sconces, no phosphor. No noises, either.

Tom turned back to the library, giving Ava a grim look. He looked over the room again, squinting through the dimness despite himself. Just the two chairs, a table – a phosphor light ensconced on the wall by the door. His brow furrowed. Then, on the table, a little candlestick.

It was a few moments before he’d got out his matches and got it lit. It was a little flame; it shed only a soft glow, barely enough to read by. Without doing anything to attract notice, he reckoned it’d have to do. Meeting Ava’s gaze one last time, he took the candlestick back over to the space between the shelves, slipping through.

In the flickering candlelight, those steps didn’t look any more appealing. He was cursing Anatole’s bad hip, thanking the whole Circle they were both wearing flats, when Ava followed him in. The wavering light murmured through the red silk of her dress, cast long shadows on the walls. Underneath the faint, lingering scent of cologne and cigar-smoke, underneath the dank and musty air, a breeze whispered up from somewhere below.

He started to look for a switch, fumbling in the close quarters, then stopped. It wasn’t too hard to ease the shelf back into place behind them. A deep sigh scraped its way out of him, and he had to shut his eyes. When he opened them, he looked at Ava.

“You sure tonight’s the night for this?” he murmured softly. “Don’t know when we’ll get another chance, but I don’t know what we’re walking into, either.”

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
The Pendulum House, Uptown

T
here was a low, hissing shuffle from somewhere behind her, and Ava held very still, trying to understand why the sound so unnerved her. After a moment she understood, and it send a tingle of fear down her spine, thrumming through her. There had been no rusty groan, no creaking.

This was a door that was used, and often. Ava turned, and followed Tom’s gaze to the sliver of darkness at the edge of a bookshelf; she held, still, and watched him pad over to the edges of it, peer into the darkness. Tom looked back out into the library, and his face was hidden by the grim dark; Ava could make out nothing but the flash of pale eyes, the hard set of his mouth.

He struck a match and lit the small candlestick from one of the tables, took it back to that darkness. Ava followed behind, watching that faint flicker of yellow light shift over the spines of the books - pool against the wall - shudder away into the dark beyond. And then she too was easing herself through the narrow gap between this room and the beyond, to the edges of a curling stone staircase, the steps worn slick and glinting with the passage of time - and feet.

Tom eased the shelf behind him, with a low grunt in Anatole’s voice that made Ava twitch, for all that it wasn’t unexpected. He looked at her, and asked if she was ready for this.

Yes, Ava thought vaguely; for a moment it had seemed like a game. Outsmarting the galdori, solving their little riddle. She took a deep breath, smelling a faint whisper of a breeze from below.

“We may never know, unless we go down there,” Ava said, gently. Had Anatole gone down these steps before, shuffling slowly and carefully over the glistening stone? Was there more to know? Were there ways to prepare? “It won’t be easier next time.”

Tom led them down the narrow stairs; Ava’s slippers were too delicate to grip well, and she did not have much of an easier time of it than he did, clinging to the stone wall, fingers fumbling against the edges of it. They spiraled down beneath Pendulum House, and when the light caught the first traces of a floor beneath Ava could have wept for joy. If it hadn’t been so dark, she knew she might have been able to look up and see the door where they had entered - it couldn’t have been so far - but it had felt like a thousand years, fumbling over the slick stones in the near dark.

Stone stretched out beneath their feet; Ava glanced up, and saw that the edges of the light caught rounded edges above, not so high overhead. She had, Ava realized uneasily, been in similar tunnels before; this place was not so different from those used by the Resistance.

And why did galdori need such a place, when the whole world above was theirs? What secrets merited such keeping?

“Wait,” Ava’s voice was low and soft; the sort of speaking that wasn’t a whisper, that didn’t echo down the halls. Ava couldn’t bring a reticule, but she had brought a tiny pot of lip color - best to be prepared. She eased it out of a tiny secret pocket, and dipped one finger into it - painted, gently, a soft glittering dark smudge against the stone walls. They would take it off with a handkerchief when they left, she told herself.

When, Ava told herself, because any other possibilities didn’t bear thinking on, not just now. They had made their preparations; it wouldn’t do to dwell.

They chose a direction and went; there was little sense in trying to be more deliberate. Both walked near silently against the stones; once Ava glanced down, and the sight of Tom padding toe to heel filled her with a reassuring warmth she couldn’t have explained.

In the deep, empty darkness all around them, there were no noises that didn’t make her heart race. And there were noises - there were distant drops of water, plodding down to splash against the ground. Soft skittering sounds - rats, Ava thought, most likely, and they had only to hope they were not of the galdori kind.

There were rooms too - thick wooden doors, some locked, some not. Some ajar, and when they peeked in they would see all sorts of things. Once - an open cell, manacles against a distant wall. Once - a table, gleaming metal, pliers and saws arrayed next to it. Once - an open floor in the midst of a ring of stonework, with the low rush of water beneath, coursing fast through the night.

And then - not-so-distant as they might have liked - a cough, scattering through the darkness, half-muffled, as if through a door. Ava froze back against the wall, held, trembling faintly. There was only one door nearby - a heavy wooden thing, cracked open.